Plan To Ban Race in Admissions To Fla. Colleges Clears Regents

The Florida board of regents voted 12-0 late last week to ban race
and gender as factors in college admissions and replace it with a
program guaranteeing high achievers automatic admission to the state's
10 public colleges and universities.

Under the program, students who graduate in the top 20 percent of
their high school classes would be eligible for admission to public
institutions next fall, provided they had completed 10 required courses
in high school, said Keith Goldschmidt, a spokesman for the state
regents, who oversee higher education. College recruiters would be
allowed, however, to take into consideration students' socioeconomic
status, the quality of their high schools, and whether their parents
earned college degrees.

The "Talented 20" admissions program is part of the controversial
"One Florida" plan that Gov. Jeb Bush directed the state to implement
in a Nov. 19 executive order. For the plan's education components to
take effect, the order requires approval from the regents as well as
the state board of education, of which the Republican governor serves
as chairman. The board of education, which oversees both K-12 and
higher education in Florida, is slated to consider the plan this week,
and is expected to approve it.

The regents' unanimous vote on Feb. 17 "was no surprise at all," Mr.
Goldschmidt said. They made only a handful of changes to the plan,
including the addition of language stating the state's commitment to
diversity on Florida's campuses, he added.

In addition to banning race-based admissions policies, the One
Florida initiative would provide additional need-based student
financial aid, increase the number of Advanced Placement and
college-preparation courses in low-performing schools, mandate that the
Preliminary SAT be made available to all 10th graders, and create a
task force to study inequalities between wealthy and poor school
districts. It also would end the practice of requiring that a certain
portion of state contracts be set aside for women and members of racial
and ethnic minorities

The plan unleashed a storm of protest around the state. But Mr. Bush
has made few concessions.

"Nothing I have heard has convinced me that we should continue the
status quo practices of quotas, set-asides, and price preferences," the
governor said last week during a press conference in
Tallahassee.

Preparation Questioned

Proponents of the Talented 20 program say that it would afford
students of all races and economic backgrounds access to higher
education. Recent figures from the board of regents show that an
additional 400 minority students would qualify for admission next fall
if the One Florida initiative is enacted. Currently, 35 percent of the
220,000 students enrolled at state institutions are members of minority
groups.

Critics, however, argue that poorly prepared students would be
admitted to top institutions, left to flounder, then drop out of
school, never to return. Many also say the plan doesn't rectify past
wrongs against African-Americans, as was the intent of race-based
admissions policies.

"The governor's plan is untested, unproven, and dependent upon the
executive discretion of the governor's office," U.S. Rep. Carrie P.
Meek, a Democrat who represents the largest black community in Miami,
said at a hearing on the plan this month.

Moreover, poorly prepared students may cost institutions huge sums
for remediation, she argued, and cheapen the value of a college degree
should such unskilled students slip through and graduate.

"What will a college degree mean for those students—other than
more debt?" asked Ms. Meek, a former college administrator who was one
of the more than 300 witnesses who testified in three recent public
hearings on the One Florida plan. The hearings drew more than 6,300
citizens, many of whom were angry.

And earlier this month, 2,000 students from Florida Agricultural and
Mechanical University, the historically black institution in
Tallahassee that serves a majority of Florida's African-American
students, held a protest march at the state Capitol.

Following the protests, Mr. Bush last week announced the formation
of a commission to assess the effectiveness of the One Florida plan
over the next three years. The governor also asked higher education
officials to perform "an exhaustive programmatic review" of the
plan.

State Rep. Lesley Miller Jr., a Democratic member of the House's
black caucus, dismissed the governor's latest concessions as
"minuscule." "That was nothing more than him trying to appease the roar
of the people here," he said.

Vol. 19, Issue 24, Page 21

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